Fantasy baseballers, I come to you today with an admission: I'm a total hypocrite. I am the first person that will tell you that the computer-based projection systems like Steamer, PECOTA, ZiPS, etc will beat a human-curated projection every time. And yet, year after year, I find myself *tinkering*. Changing an ERA/WHIP projection here, increasing a batting average or HR-total there. There are certainly areas where the computer systems fall short, since they don't know about injuries, can be slow to adjust to real-world depth chart changes, and tend to be skeptical of breakouts. This year, I've created a tool that allows me to go about this customization/adjustment process in a much more systematic way: the DIY Projection Tool. Thanks to this handy tool, I've been able to integrate all of my preseason research, including injuries, xStats, and depth chart info, into a set of over 300 custom projections (included in this year's Big Board). But, I'm all about empowering you all to do these things yourself, so what follows here is a comprehensive tutorial in how to build your own custom projections.

Does everyone love the snake draft? No. Is the snake draft necessary because it's hard to convince people to spend 8 hours on an auction draft? Yes. For those of us in keeper leagues, this time of year brings the additional joyous task of trying to strategize for the upcoming draft. Do you trade away players for picks and rebuild in the draft? Trade away picks for players to strengthen your core team? Try to steal away the most undervalued players in the league before their owners realize what they have? Cut any number of ways, if you start throwing draft picks on the table at some point you’ll arrive at the question… what is a draft pick worth, anyway? Today, we're taking a look at the Big Board Trade Tool, which can be found for free on this site as the regular 5x5 version, and can also be found within every copy of the Big Board as a fully customized-to-your-league version.

The ATC projection system was released earlier this week on FanGraphs, and much like my post for PECOTA, I wanted to take a look at who they like/dislike. I've set the Steamer projection system as my 'baseline', as they're the earliest-released and most-trusted system, and I'll use the Big Board's PA and IP in both cases. Let's do five of each. Here's what I found (I'll show the ATC projections below, and you can check them out side-by-side with Steamer at this link):

An exciting day for projections nerds everywhere, as Baseball Prospectus has released their PECOTA projection system for 2018. While some people are getting excited or annoyed at the various win projections, I've been poring over the individual player projections to find the ones that PECOTA loves and hates. I've set the Steamer projection system as my 'baseline', as they're the earliest-released and most-trusted system, and I'll use the Big Board's PA and IP in both cases. Let's do five of each. Here's what I found (I'll show the PECOTA projections below, and you can check them out side-by-side with Steamer at this link)